Five things I hate about you, Trout Edition

Just to keep up the theme…

Tiny flies. I hate tiny flies. If it is going to take a #24, I don’t want to catch it. I don’t want to play that game.

Light tippets. Now, I pretty much do most of my trout fishing with 3x (5x for dries), but there are times I know I should be fishing lighter. I refuse to fish 7x and 6x is even a stretch for me. I want to set the hook and not pop off the fly.

Poison Oak. I. Hate. Poison. Oak.

Take that.

Fishing behind people. So many times I’ve turned a corner to find someone there… meaning I’ve been fishing in their shadow for the past x minutes/hours. Usually that explains the poor fishing.

That one fly shop I don’t shop at. You know the one… the one where there is just an air of condescension pouring out of the early 20 something fly shop guy who is working at the shop as a break from his snow boarding career. I love fly shops, but not the ones like that. I hate those places. As you pull into a new town to fish some new river you don’t know if it is going to be one of those or the other kind, the kind I love… which I bet we’ll get to tomorrow.

5 comments

I so very much agree with all the above. Here in Idaho there is also Poison Ivy, and nettles, mosquitoes, ticks, horseflies, and deerflies. I don’t tie anything below a size 18, usually more like 16 anymore. A guide scoffed at me once, I said trout don’t carry little measuring tapes with them. Besides, when I fish the modern bobber rig (two nymphs with split shot and a strike indicator) the trout almost always choose the larger stonefly rather than the tiny pheasant tail. I have 5x tippet but almost never use it. I know exactly which shops you are talking about. Those guys hate it when I call it a bobber rig, which encourages me to do so. I try to go places where I know I won’t be fishing behind someone, but in some places it’s almost a given unless you get there at 0darkthirty.

Interesting on the stonefly thing. What I usually see is the fish taking the smaller, bottom fly. I always go weight, larger fly, smaller fly. The smaller fly has a more natural drift and will often get the fish for me.

I weight most of my nymphs with metal beads and/or lead wire so I don’t have to use split shot. I do sometimes catch fish on the smaller fly, and my stonefly patterns are not too huge, usually 8 or 10’s, and I try different color combos with the stones, like black/red or amber/green, brown/black or black/blue, and even purple/blue. Just last weekend on the McKenzie in Oregon I had a #8 black/red stonefly nymph and a #16 gun metal bead head brassie style nymph. Caught the biggest (16″) and most on the stonefly pattern and one smaller trout (8″) on the small nymph. Several smaller trout ate the stonefly that day.

5 Things I Love about Trout Fishing:
1.) Tiny (dry) flies: It’s gotta be right, trout can see incredibly well and you have to be GOOD to catch a big wise trout with a fly that imitates what they are actually eating… no “attractor patterns here”, no feeding instinct, no crap: just pure preparation, presentation and patience… No Luck. You either fool the trout or you don’t.
2.) Light tippets: It takes finesse and some skill to not break off a big trout on 6X… but we use it, because we HAVE to use it. Like I said trout can see well… really well. If you wanted it to be easy, why not go spin fishing or sling a worm. Trout fishing with small flies and light tippets is a sport i.e. sporting a.k.a. outcome unknown! If you translate the same parlance to flats fishing and want it to be easy, try a hunk of conch for a bone or a live crab for a permit… works every time!
3.) That it actually works: That you can actually hook and land a 24″ brown on a size 22 parachute Adams on 6X tippet. That is cool!
4). There is no 4. I hate poison ivy, crowds and obnoxious shop guys.
5.) Ditto